Posts for 2020 (page 9)

I spent the beginning of my 30’s watching my mother
Dispense nervous energy like the crude oil of her mid 50’s.
I crow over her, mesmerized.
A blank child watching my favorite wind up toy tire itself.
I am careful with what’s left of her.
I am her personal cheerleader.
My team shirt says, “Sit down and let me help you.” 
I watch her green beans sweat and her desserts set up.
Then I ask, “What else? What now? See shirt.”

Something behind her eyes crumbles
When she hears the news that her sisters aren’t coming.
She fingers the fake flower bouquets resevered for the grave cleaning,
Readjusts, adds more color, and tilts her head for my approval. 
I know this game as soon as she creates it.
It’s called, ‘If we add the right flowers then it will be okay
for a minute that everything is different
and no one is showing up for Memorial day.’

We’re like the blown up photo of a family that used to exist,
Made into cardboard cutouts and propped up like scarecrows.
I don’t know when the set up became my mother’s reluctant duty.
Her job, on top of all others,
to set the scene of ‘family’ with such scarce resources.
She sits down for less than an hour at 11:30 p.m.
I hear the clink of her coffee spoon jingling “good morning” at 4:45 a.m. 
Five hours is not enough sleep to rest.
But enough, she says, for a tired nurse,
still a full decade away from retirement.
I don’t get up.
5 a.m. is the closest thing to peace I watch her give herself.
Instead, I sit in the dark and write this poem,
and listen to her spoon ring against her cup like a secret bird song 
only I can decipher. 
Like a bell it sings to me: 
“Hurry, time is precious and we’ve run out of all that was left to waste.”

Your fragile body hovers
weightless
sucking nectar
from the lily bloom
bursting
pregnant pollen

With your type A personality 
no none sense, no stops
on a mission to distribute
sustenance

Pressed
by time
you race to finish
ere your metabolism
empties you
Torpor becomes
tool for survival

Delicate
and tenacious
migrating forward.

Pine Mountain Cemetery XXX
            The Rumor

Dire rumor’s swirling through these pines.
More than a century has passed and no
Mining on Pine Mountain. Word was told

That no coal lay under that rise of rock
Dirt, tree roots and hidden water veins.
Saved this old mountain many a time.

Tale is that a stranger with money galore,
Wants to search and see for himself if
This mountain and hollar are really that poor.

Coal don’t sell for hardly enough to dig it
Anymore, why would he want to kill what’s
Left just because he can? Oh spirit of Indian

Tribe, ghosts of miners gone before, kin
And children, pioneer and scallywag. Rise
Up and cause a whirl of trouble. Bring heavy

Trembles undergound, forty day rains, mud
Slides, rattlesnakes thick, and copperheads, too.
Pull out every trick, do your best to trouble him.

Saving yesterday is like honing a knife. It gives
You something to look forward to, a good clean
Slice to rid the bad and save the past.

Let it not be that no todays remain of comfort
Placing what’s left of us in sacred, holy ground
Of pines, and mountain air and God’s best days.

More tales and lies and myths are still possible high
On this saving hill. But if all is lost, ground under
Yellow monsters with teeth as tall as two men,

We will take with us the deep knowing of their lives
Their loves, their hopes and ours. We might ought
To think that our bones could also rest nearer town.

No, I plan to take comfort in the hope that rumor won’t
Take on physical form or intent. I’d do better to rest my
Mind on the hope of fate saving me a piney place to rest.

Standing
in the store with
people grazing
my side, paint
stripes forced into my cheek,
the wall grows taller
and taller by the second.
Colors morphing
into one
giant mess
as I ultimately choose
a puke green,
imagining a pastel yellow.

I cover the crisp brown wall
in two more
new coats making
your room just
that much smaller—
pushing you farther out
of our lives.

River in cursive
careens. Azure mirrors weave
an inverse maze.

            / / / /

Sequined fish rainbow.
Ripples clutch cyrpess-
knees, seeking comfort.

Vines grope the oaks,
shake the silver from
stiff beards of old moss.

Molasses and Honey
walk down Front Street
absorbed in 
twighlight kisses sweet

such a lovely story
who would ever know
the disregard in their bones

would chill this writer so?

I am rainbow
moonstone

run through
with tourmaline. 

Hexagonal
point, above 

jagged, half-
hewn base. 

Sliver of light
given solidity;

darker veins
in shadow.

a revolution worth having
both starts where it ended
and ends somewhere
else

horologists differ
as to the mechanism
but acknowledge the change nonetheless

augurs claim
to know both loci 
but can’t explain the distance

i spin,
meanwhile,
chronologically
topographically
alone

When I was 10, I was in the hospital for corrective surgery-
those were the days when they kept you a long time.
I heard the nurses and other night visitors rustling in my fruit basket –
an impressive gift from my father’s office, and I couldn’t eat it all, anyway.

My mother’s friend visited, and just leaned over the rail and looked in to my face.
I didn’t know how brave it really was at the time, but his own daughter never left.

A local lady donated a VCR and some movies for the children.
Since I was not actually sick, merely recuperating,
I was deemed photogenic enough for the paper-
a small girl with large casts that could take direction.

They arranged us in the common area, several officials standing around for the photo.
A big TV stand was wheeled in – while they arranged the shots,
I was watching raptly as the rabbits battled.

The girl who didn’t speak and always had an IV pole pulled out her line,
and bled silently on the floor as she gaped at the screen;
someone tried to clean her up while they got the lighting right,
at last they got their shot and their story –
hospital kids enjoying a movie, a respite.
They cut the medical applainces out of the frame.

Later I watched the movie in earnest, not quite getting the themes-losing of home and self,
fighting, losses, victories, peace in death. This would come later.

As I struggled to learn to transfer from bed to wheelchair,
I remember one old nurse whispering fiercely
“Some children here are actually sick and they learn to do this.”
I was afraid of bumping the metal rods in my legs –
When touched they sang along the nerves,
sloshing into my guts and leaving me light-headed.

I finally managed it and searched her face for approval.
She signed my cast “to my best girl,” and I got to go home.

Something as mythical as a dream/
Calls us to something different/
For us to realize, in our intrusion we are no different than drops of rain into a stream/
With this subtle push, we become less resistant.
Calls us to something different/
Where all that is held is fear/
With this subtle push, we become less resistant/
The illusion of choice makes such things more clear.
Where all this held is fear/
A dream, a thought demands our arrival/
The illusion of choice makes such things more clear/
We must not believe ourselves to be the reason for a truths revival.
Cry, cry, cry for such ignorance is disgraceful/
When the poet thinks he can write at will/
He will find only the shadow of skill/
Cry, cry, cry for those that think dreams arrive because of their want.